


Rescued Again

by kirazi



Series: Winterfell Sequence [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 8x03, Bathtubs, Battle of Winterfell, Caretaking, F/M, Feelings, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Post-Battle, Season/Series 08, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 19:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18666880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirazi/pseuds/kirazi
Summary: She feels emptied out, still unutterably weary, but shored up by a fragile scaffolding of relief, something that might eventually stabilize into peace.(Jaime and Brienne, still fighting their way side by side through the aftermath, in the twenty-four hours after the Battle of Winterfell.)





	Rescued Again

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another 8x03 post-episode fic, featuring grief and exhaustion and mutual caretaking and the obligatory bathtub, because I can't help myself; these two beautiful idiots-in-love have ruined my brain. First time posting on AO3 (she don't even go here!) and the unforgettable sight of Gwendoline Christie's face in the firelight in 8x02 is 100% to blame.

Brienne wakes slowly, every bone in her body aching as she stirs, and when she finally opens her eyes, they meet Jaime’s. He’s gazing across the pillow at her, the lines in his face picked out by the first rays of winter sunlight coming through the window, and at first the sight of him is the only thing she’s aware of, the only thing left in the world. And then the rest comes rushing back, woken by the sparks of pain that are kindling through her body—the rushing onslaught of the dead, the stink and terror and noise, and the desperate, mindless hacking, all the eternal minutes of the battle and the grueling hours confronting the death and devastation left in its wake. He must see it, that tide of memory sweeping into her face, because he lifts a hand to her shoulder, his touch as warm through the worn linen as if she were bare, and says, softly, “Don’t. It will keep. Don’t think about it now.”

“How?” she croaks back at him, suddenly desperate to keep her all senses at bay. Her throat still burns from the smoke and the screaming, and it feels like she’ll never be able to fill her lungs and breathe cleanly again.

A flicker of a smile ghosts across his mouth, not quite reaching his eyes. “Well, I was keeping _my_ mind occupied watching you sleep. I could keep doing that, if you’ll do me the favor of resting a little longer.”

She can’t stop the tears welling up, and she blinks at him, lost for words, and he lifts his good hand to her face, gentle against the bruised flesh. She closes her eyes and feels his thumb brushing the wetness from her lashes, and then he settles his hand in her hair and just holds it there, steady and warm, while she weeps in silence.

***

It’s been a full day since the unexpected dawn found them empty and shaking against the wall of the courtyard, the sky brightening above them as her lungs heaved for breath and her mind struggled to come back to itself, to put together the fragments around her: the sensation of the rough brick at their backs, the mountain of corpses, no longer moving, piled in front of them, Pod—thank the Seven, thank any gods watching them now for sparing him—at their left, coughing and wiping the blood and muck from his eyes, battered and _alive_. She turned, almost disbelieving, to look at her squire, to fix the image of him in her eyes until she could be sure it was real, and then her gaze was caught by the tarnished shine of Jaime’s false hand still there at her elbow, where she’d fought alongside him, shoring up his right side during their final, hopeless stand. He was the first to speak; she looked at him and saw her empty exhaustion reflected in his face, until thought came back into his eyes and he said, “The crypts.”

They moved as one, without speaking, her legs strange and weightless, as if she was walking through water and not air. Down into the charnel house of the crypts, where the fear that had been driven out by the sheer relentlessness of combat seized her up in its claws again as they searched for her lady and his brother, until they came around a pillar and found the two of them collecting a ragged group of survivors. Brienne moved without thinking to Sansa’s side—her face pale and eyes huge under her shining red hair, upright and unhurt, a miracle—and Jaime dropped to his knees and buried his face in his little brother’s shoulder, as Tyrion’s arms went around him in a fierce embrace.

It was Sansa who led them back out into the daylight, who kept her composure at the sight that met them there, who managed to give orders, her voice only trembling a little, to the survivors trickling into the courtyard of Winterfell: calling on maesters to set up places to tend to the wounded in the keep, sending the girls who’d made it out of the crypt to collect the smashed wood of the balconies and start cooking fires, ordering the remainders of her household to inventory the stores of food and fuel and check on the livestock. She wept when Jon Snow stumbled up to them and threw his arms around her, and when Arya brought Bran back from the godswood and Bran told them what they’d all known—the Night King was dead, it was over—and what they hadn’t, who had done it and how. And through all the tears and embraces she kept going, organizing the remnants of the living and setting them to the task of stitching the world back together. Watching her, Brienne saw the clear echo of Catelyn in that resolute face— _a woman’s kind of courage_ —and then turned and saw Arya, blood-streaked and fierce and proud, and gave up a silent prayer of thanks that these two were the ones she’d pledged her life and honor to serve.

Jaime stayed at her side through the length of that grim day, as he had through the night before it, never more than an arm’s distance away, while they ignored a command to rest and instead joined a handful of their fellow combatants to search the grounds and fields for any wounded who had a chance at survival. They left the dead where they had fallen, at first—“we’ll lay them to rest with honor, tomorrow,” Sansa had said in the courtyard, “but today we must concern ourselves with the living”—but after the first few hours the remaining Unsullied set themselves to the task of sorting the bodies of those fallen in battle from the rotting corpses of the wights, and with no more wounded left to rescue, Brienne and the others joined them. Her arms felt like they might drop from her shoulders at any moment, except it was easier, somehow, to keep moving, to deal with the tangible reality of the work to be done, than to sit down and think about what they’d just lived through, what they had survived. At some point she stopped to gulp down a cupful of water and heaved off most of her armor, Jaime wordlessly moving to unfasten the back of her breastplate before she returned the favor for him, both of them leaving the battered metal in a heap by the well, their swords propped up carefully against the wall behind it. Still moving in a haze, Brienne saw a pair of limping Dothraki carry Jorah Mormont’s corpse in on a makeshift stretcher, followed by the dragon queen, her face ravaged with grief as she watched them lay him down next to the crumpled remains of his kinswoman. Pod and a brother of the Watch carried in a score of bodies from the godswood, and she only recognized the Greyjoy boy’s face when Sansa stopped and knelt to brush his bloody hair out of his eyes, staying there with her head bowed, until Tyrion came up behind her and rested a hand on her shoulder in a futile gesture of comfort, and she got up again and followed him back to the work of the living. It went on, wordless and endless, until the grey light of the afternoon was fading. They were helping some of the Winterfell men clear the entrance to the larder, heaving up another charred log, when Sansa came down from the terrace behind them and said, “That’s enough.”

“My lady,” Brienne said automatically, and then stopped, unsure what she had been about to say, the words heavy and strange in her mouth, as if she’d forgotten at some point in the past few hours how to speak at all.

“Alek, Torren, there’s bread and soup in the front courtyard, and they’re making up straw beds for you in the stables,” Sansa told the men they’d been helping, who ducked their heads to her and stumbled off in the direction she’d indicated.

She turned back to Brienne and Jaime. “Go and rest, both of you,” she said. “The maesters have their hands full as it is, and it will be no help if you fall over and make more work for them. The spring under the library tower has been cleared out if you want to wash first. I’ll have someone bring food to your chamber.”

Brienne nodded, numbly, and Sansa glanced past her. “Ser Jaime, see that she gets some rest. And do the same.”

Jaime’s voice was hoarse, but steady. “Thank you, Lady Stark.”

Sansa paused for a moment, then met his eyes. “And I thank you. Both of you. Your service to this House this day will not be forgotten,” she said, looking at them each in turn, and then turned and went back up the stair, the sodden hem of her cloak swirling with each surefooted step.

Brienne had no recollection, later, of coming back through the dusk-shadowed courtyards, of following Jaime down the worn steps to the damp, torchlit chamber under the tower where a small pool fed by Winterfell’s hot springs awaited them, separate from the main baths below the keep. The next thing she was aware of was the shock of the warm, humid air, standing there in it as frozen as a statue, watching as Jaime sat down on the bench to pull off his ruined boots, and then stood to strip himself free of layers of wool and leather soaked through with blood and mud and gore. That compelled her back into motion, suddenly able to feel the wet filth of her own clothing, and she peeled off her stinking tunic and unlaced her breeches, her actions almost as unthinking as those of the shambling corpses that still hurled themselves in waves at the back of her mind.

“Careful,” he said, offering her his arm to steady her as she stepped down into the steaming water, bracing himself against the wall with his good hand as he followed. She had no strength left to be shy of him—and he’d seen her naked before, what did it matter—though her mind collected itself enough to watch him as he sank down into the bath with a sigh, her eyes searching his bare body more in order to inventory his injuries than to dwell on his form. But some part of her still marked the beauty of those long, spare limbs, even trembling with exhaustion and darkening with bruises under the grime. She felt his returning gaze, and for once there was no self-consciousness in her; she welcomed his careful glance like a comforting touch. They sat motionless for long minutes, soaking the heat into their bones, and eventually she reached for the cake of soap on the stones beside her and started to wash the blood and sweat from her hair. When she was done she plunged her head beneath the surface, feeling every cut and scrape sting from the heat and the mineral tang of the spring. She surfaced, rubbing her eyes, and Jaime handed her a clean rag from the bench to wipe her face with and took the cake of soap from her hand in return. He was still for a moment, then reached to unlace the leather straps that braced his false hand in place, and his sudden awkwardness made it plain that this was a different kind of nakedness, one difficult to expose even in the weary extremis they had come to.

“Let me,” Brienne told him, and reached out before he could demur. He nodded, not quite meeting her eyes, and held his wrist still against the rim of the bath while she undid the laces, wincing as she eased off the cuff, and then wincing again as he lowered his arm into the hot water without removing the linen binding around the stump—which, she saw, was stiffened with blood, stuck to the abraded flesh beneath. She reached for his arm again, and he let her take it and bend over to look carefully as she unwrapped the water-softened strips of gauze with as much gentleness as her tired hands could muster. She stifled her own impulse to wince at the sight of the wounds they revealed, struck by an almost painful impulse to guard his pride. But when she dared a glance at his face, she realized that pride, too, had been leached away, by the heat of the water and the magnitude of what they’d endured. He was looking at her, not at his missing hand, regarding her with a calm, steady expression she didn’t recognize, and the corner of his mouth quirked upwards when she couldn’t keep the scolding look off her face.

“You should have had someone see to this hours ago,” she grumbled at him, “not spent half a day more lifting things!”

“I had barely any feeling left in it,” he said, as unrepentant as Pod getting lectured about neglecting the state of his boots, and she felt her heart stumble upright like a drunken soldier and fall straight back over, suddenly alive again inside her. “I’m sure the maesters had more urgent needs to tend.”

Brienne felt herself glaring at him, and saw the responding grin he was only barely suppressing, and the staggering relief of it warmed her to her toes, the impulse to grouse at him as familiar and as soothing as the bathwater.

“You’ll not neglect it again,” she told him, doing her best to sound firm. “That’s an order from your commander.”

“Yes, Ser,” he replied—his tone as obediant as any good soldier’s, but his eyes as mocking as a scoundrel’s—and she was laughing, suddenly, unable to stop herself, and so was he, the water rippling around them as their shoulders heaved. After a moment, the odd, hysterical mirth faded away, leaving her no less weary but somehow a good deal calmer. Jaime scrubbed the soap through his filthy beard and hair and dunked his head and wiped his face, and she climbed out of the bath and found some clean scraps of linen to dry herself with, and two shabby, patchworked cloaks hanging behind the door. The wool was rough against her bare skin, but warm, and once Jaime had dried himself she handed the other to him and he wrapped himself in it, regarding the pile of discarded clothing on the floor with a grimace. “I’d rather kiss your wildling than put my boots back on,” he said, swaying on his feet, looking as tired as she felt, and sounding more unguarded than she’d heard him since the last time they'd found themselves sharing a bath, battered and astonished to be alive.

Brienne made a face at him. “He’s not _mine_. And we can take the stair in this tower up and cross into the guest hall without going outside,” she added, gathering their ruined clothes and both pairs of boots under one arm and fisting the other hand in the folds of her cloak to keep it from flapping open.

“Rescued again,” Jaime said, picking up his false hand and stowing it under the arm it usually decorated, and followed her out into the stair.

Mercifully, they encountered no one on the way back to her chamber, although there were fallen wights like grim reminders to step around, barefooted, in the half-wrecked library, and voices came echoing up the stairwell at the far end of the corridor as she opened the door and ushered him in. Neither commented on their shared destination—somehow it went unspoken and agreed that he was coming with her, that neither of them was going to leave the other’s side. Brienne dropped the filthy pile of leather and cloth she was carrying in the corner by the door, and headed over to the small chest that stored the rest of her meager supply of clothing. She dug out and pulled on an old pair of woolen hose before unwrapping her cloak and shivering as she yanked a shirt over her shoulders, the thin linen little protection against the chill air. She searched back through the chest for her other spare shirt, the one with the longer hem, and turned and handed it to Jaime.

“This should fit.” He took it without comment, unwinding himself from the cloak and pulling it on one-handed, and then stumbled towards the bed before halting and looking back at her with a question—several, perhaps—in his eyes.

“Get in before you freeze,” she told him, too tired to think further, or answer any question beyond the most obvious one. “I’ll not have you survive the army of the dead just to catch chill and die of a grippe.”

He obeyed with an entirely uncustomary docility, climbing in and shifting himself to the side up against the wall and holding the heavy covers of wool and fur open for her with his hand. She followed, all the limbs of her body feeling heavy as lead, and if he said anything else to her, it was lost to the onrushing tide of sleep that overwhelmed her as soon as her head met the pillow.

***

In the morning, when the frantic burst of voiceless weeping finally subsides, she feels something tickling her ear, and realizes she’s tucked into his shoulder, now, his arms locked tight around her and his beard bristling against her skin. It’s a strange sensation, like a half-forgotten refrain, an echo of her father’s embrace. How long has it been since her body’s been this close to a man she wasn’t fighting? Although she’s fought Jaime, she thinks, and held him too, in the baths at Harrenhal. With that thought comes the memory of the previous evening, of washing off the muck and horror of the battleground and making their way to this quiet room, those recollected moments chasing away the nightmare of what had preceded them, and Brienne shoves a hand up between them to wipe the tears and snot from her face, her breath still uneven, but steadying. Jaime loosens his hold on her, but doesn’t let go, and she feels him press a kiss to her brow, his hand still moving in comforting circles across her back. He doesn’t say anything, but when she opens her eyes she sees the tracks of tears on his face too, and the surge of embarrassment she’d thought might rush up and overwhelm her is nowhere to be found. Instead, she feels emptied out, still unutterably weary, but shored up by a fragile scaffolding of relief, something that might eventually stabilize into peace.

He’s still watching her, like there’s something he’s about to say, but he’s holding it back, uncertain, and she can’t find words either, so she just mirrors his previous gesture, reaching a hand to his face, letting her thumb trail over the damp hollows marked out under his eyes, and he closes them and the breath rushes out of him like he’d been holding it until now, like he can finally let it go. He turns his face a little, and kisses the palm she’s holding cupped against it, and when he opens his eyes again he’s looking at her the way he’d looked at her in the firelight, his sword in his hand, when she’d risen to her feet before him, made new, and that’s enough, that’s all she needs to see to lean in and put her lips to his.

The first kiss is chaste, just a soft touch, his mouth dry against her lips, but when she starts to pull away he reels her back in, pressing her body to his, and then his mouth is on hers, and _oh_ , it’s something else entirely, something she hadn’t fully anticipated, warm and wet and searching. His tongue teases hers and his teeth scrape her bottom lip and she makes a sound she can’t stifle and she can _feel_ him grinning in response, triumphant, and then she’s holding his face with both hands, trying to kiss him back and map all his features with her fingertips at the same time. The feeling is surging through her body, and it’s like nothing she’s ever felt before, not even the bright joy of her sword clashing with a well-matched opponent's, and he drags her closer, her body flush against his, until his hand presses up on a particularly nasty bruise on her side—fuck, that’s probably a cracked rib, if not a broken one—and she yelps in pain and they break apart, flushed and staring at one another.

She sees the worry writ plain on his face and she rushes to stop it, to reassure him, saying “No, it’s all right, just a sore spot, took a nasty blow to the ribs—" and he’s just gaping at her, open-mouthed, and then he says “ _Brienne_ ,” her name like a prayer in his mouth, like a plea for their lives. He’s breathing as hard as if they’d been sparring, a thought that makes her giggle, helplessly, while somehow feeling like she's also on the verge of bursting into tears again. It leaves her trembling, suddenly shy and uncertain, unable to look him in the face.

Jaime takes a deep breath, and then another, collecting himself, and tilts her face up until her eyes meet his—gone solemn and serious, but glad.

“My lady knight,” he says, and smiles at her, fingers stroking against her cheek. “I have every intention of taking up your challenge, once we’re both fit for it. Until then, Ser,”—he leans in, and kisses her again, gentle and sweet—“shall we call a parley, and start with breakfast?”

Brienne knows there’s another long, hard day awaiting them, biers and burials and the beginning of several difficult conversations about all manner of unfinished business to the south, but she sets it all aside, for a moment. It will keep. She kisses him back, just once more, and rests her forehead against his, smiling.

“I accept your terms,” she tells him, and curls her fingers around his, feeling the sunlight steady on their hands and faces, warm at last.


End file.
